(C)Losing the Debate: Importance of Effectiveness in Communication
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Synergies in Business and Academic Communication. 143 Training, Education and Research (C)LOSING THE DEBATE: IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVENESS IN COMMUNICATION Preeti SHIRODKAR1 Friends, our dear sister is departing for foreign in two three days, and we are meeting today to wish her bon voyage. You are all knowing, friends, What sweetness is in Miss Pushpa. I don't mean only external sweetness but internal sweetness. Miss Pushpa is smiling and smiling even for no reason but simply because she is feeling. (‘Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S.’ – Ezekiel, 1989) Abstract In a world that is getting increasingly multicultural, bilingualism is not an option. So too effectiveness in communication is a necessity, not an option. English being the second language, for most in India, there is an innate tendency to translate from the mother tongue, creating faux pas that can be disastrous. However, if one is aware of these pitfalls their effect can be reduced, if not totally averted. My paper points out such errors in grammar, vocabulary, accent, spellings and punctuation, in the Indian context, so that they can serve as guideposts to teachers and students in diverse locations. Keywords: effectiveness, bilingualism, English, pitfalls, Indian context 1 Dr. Preeti Shirodkar, Communication and Soft Skills, MET Institute of Management, Mumbai, India, [email protected] SYNERGY volume 11, no. 2/2015 144 (C)losing the Debate: Importance of Effectiveness in Communication 1. Introduction Indian English has over the years not merely become a genre in itself; it has also been exploited by both native and diasporic writers of Indian origin, with great effectiveness. Yet, there is no denying that while the humour and quirkiness it adds to Indian literature in English, helping it create a niche in the extant body of literatures in English, in its day to day use, is charming in its own way, this amusement can often turn to chagrin or disappointment with the faux pas that creep into the manner in which English is used by Indians. Without really going into the debate whether language is essentially a vehicle for communication and so its perfection should not be insisted upon, I would like to base my paper on the premise that this argument really does not hold water, if one acknowledges the fact that there is really a very thin line between communication and miscommunication; and miscommunication, when it does take place can have effects that can prove disastrous. A case in point is that of an employee of a multinational company, who put forward a leave request stating “Kindly grant me leave, as I want to marry my daughter”. Its humour apart, such statements can prove to be fairly controversial and detrimental to the image and wellbeing of the persons involved. 2. Common communication mistakes As a teacher of English Literature and Communication, I have come across varied instances in my almost two and a half decades of experience, where one has to get in touch with colleagues or students to ask them what they are trying to convey. Moreover, in my attempts to enhance the communication skills of students, I have also realised that identifying pitfalls in communication, that are bound to be common to a group of speakers, given that in India English is the second language for most and hence the native language interferes it its acquisition and use, helps them to reduce these errors or even steer clear of them. This paper would thus look at errors in language use, by highlighting the common mistakes committed in five areas – vocabulary, accent/pronunciation, spellings, punctuation and grammar. While some of these may be peculiar ‘Indianisms’, others may be applicable to non-native speakers in general; and, if not, this paper would at least open up a thought process through which teachers and users of English could think along the lines of identifying such peculiarities, in order to avoid them. 2.1 Accent/ Pronunciation SYNERGY volume 11, no. 2/2015 Synergies in Business and Academic Communication. 145 Training, Education and Research Given that the phonetic structure of every language is different, often pronunciation as well as the rhythm of speech can be carried forward from one language to the other. Most Indian languages, for example, encompass a subtle rise at the end of a sentence, to indicate a question or have the ‘wh’ word, which marks the question, appearing at the end of a sentence. As a result, Indians often use statements as questions by raising the intonation towards the end of the sentence. For example, they say ‘You are coming?’ instead of ‘Are you coming?’, in case they want to ask a question. So too, accent or stress gets placed on the wrong word, making it at times difficult to understand the meaning - in the sentence ‘What are you doing?’ often instead of stressing on ‘what’ people stress on ‘are’. Moreover, even in words, the stress is laid on the wrong syllable, especially in words that have shifting stress like ‘photograph’ and ‘photography’. These are often pronounced as /‘fəʊtəʊɡrɑːf / and /fəʊˈtəʊɡrəfi/, while words like ‘memory’ are often pronounced as ‘mammary’, ‘paverty’ replaces ‘poverty’ and ‘vote’ ‘what’. So too, given that native Indian languages do not have silent letters, words like ‘ghost’, ‘honest’, ‘honour’ are either mispronounced or then misspelt, with pronunciation getting further complicated by English having liberally borrowed from other languages which makes pronunciation of words like ‘rendezvous’ (/reɪndeɪzvez/) and ‘suite’ (/swiːt/ gets pronounced as /suːt/) difficult to pronounce. Ironically, this situation has worsened due to a dual onslaught that of poor reading habits along with spellings being taught through phonetics in schools, in accordance with the latest trends. 2.2 Spellings What is not however realised though is that this principle of learning spellings, through phonetics, is a modern technique that has been developed essentially in a context, where English is the mother and not the other tongue, as a result of which the question of native language interference does not arise. Since this pedagogical principle has been blindly adopted in India, there is often a problem with people’s ability to spell, more especially in similar sounding words like ‘stationery’ and stationary’ as also ‘letter’, ‘later’ and ‘latter’. In fact, while the three words in the latter set do not even have the same pronunciation, often as a result of poor pronunciation, they are badly spelt. The problem becomes only worse with words where spellings change as per word forms, for e.g. ‘practice’ as a noun and a verb. Simple words like’ writing’ and ‘grammar’ are also victims of a similar issue. Furthermore, words which exist separately, but get joined to form another word like ‘in to’ and ‘in spite of’ regularly serve as the nemesis of people, while writing. A case in point is a notice that was at one point, put up in railway compartments, ‘During travelling, Do not throw cigarette butts, tobacco and pan masala pouches SYNERGY volume 11, no. 2/2015 146 (C)losing the Debate: Importance of Effectiveness in Communication in to the gap’ (John, 2007: 51) where instead of ‘into’ being one word, it was used as two separate words. 2.3 Punctuation In fact, this example also serves to illustrate the errors that creep in, in the use of punctuation. This railway sign has a capital ‘D’ for ‘do not’ after a comma and while this may be an exception, regular mistakes occur in the use of exclamation marks, semicolons an apostrophes. Whereas people have a doubt whether to use capital letters after an exclamation mark if it used at the beginning of a sentence or whether the exclamation mark should immediately follow the exclamatory word like in the sentence ‘Alas, I could not save him!’; the problem is much worse in the case of apostrophes and semicolons where people either don’t use them at all or put them in the wrong place. It is not uncommon to find ‘Punjabi Dishe’s’ or ‘Your’s’ or even ‘CD’s’ where people insert an apostrophe, where it is not necessary. People are also confused and use apostrophes in words like ‘its’, even when they are not referring to ‘it is’. For e.g. ‘A dog wags its tail when it’s happy’ where ‘its tail’ does not require an apostrophe but ‘it’s happy’ does. The reason for this, according to a scholar of Marathi, from Mumbai, Ms. Anagha Mandavkar, is that Sanskrit and Marathi, among other languages, did not have the punctuation marks that English does, in ancient times. These languages relied on a single vertical dash for a short pause and a double vertical dash for a long pause. However, in modern times, in Indian languages, these punctuation marks have been borrowed from English and are thus not a part of the linguistic subconscious of its people. Paradoxically, even teachers and scholars of English ignore the use of punctuation, as they find it incidental and not particularly important, without really realising that even a comma can completely change the meaning of a sentence. As Lynne Truss (2003) opines in Eats Shoots and Leaves, where she gives the example of the sentence ‘A woman without her man is nothing’. The first comma remaining constant after ‘a woman’, a shift in the second comma from after her, to after man, can completely invert the meaning of the sentence. 2.4 Vocabulary And, if a thing as easily dismissed as punctuation can create such havoc, one can only imagine the problems that can creep in due to inappropriate use of vocabulary. A common mistake is the use of ‘myself so and so’, as a form of introduction, in India.